In the very center of downtown San Jose, the capital
of
Silicon Valley, stands the one and only public work or art commissioned
by the city. It’s 8 feet tall and it cost a half million dollars.

It’s a sculpture of a huge piece of dog poop.

Not only was this done, but it’s still here. And
there
are no plans to remove it.

How could this be true? How on earth did it happen?

Here's the story.

Close
your eyes and imagine a person with a lot

of
money and an enormous inferiority complex.

What
do you see happening?

You’re right. It isn’t pretty.

San Jose is best known for not being San Francisco.
We
don’t have the restaurants, the theater, the cute Victorians. When you
say “The City” it means San Francisco and those of us who live here
pretend
to accept that. But that’s like saying Dione Warwick’s pop
tune is on the same level of Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart in San
Francisco.
Which would be delusional.

With the infusion of dot.com money, the City Fathers
believed
they could afford to buy some respect. Up went a subsidized Fairmont
Hotel,
just like they have in San Francisco. And tracks were laid and wires
were
strung for our cute little trolleys, some of which look exactly like
cable
cars. If we had a body of water, I’m sure there’d be a suspension
bridge.

And what about art?

The City Fathers commissioned Robert Graham, one of
the
foremost sculptors in America today. He did the Olympic Arch and the
Washington’s
FDR memorial. He’s married to Angelica Houston and for a brief amount
of
time he actually lived in San Jose. (You know, San Jose, California, 45
miles south of San Francisco.). Graham was a perfect choice. He
was
born in Mexico City and the City Fathers wanted something that would
honor
our Mexican heritage and sizable Mexican-American community which was
beginning
to flex it’s political muscle.

Graham proposed constructing Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec
god.
It was going to a magnificent three story bronze sculptor illuminated
at
night with floodlights from nearby buildings. In the center of the
city,
it would be our show piece; it would put San Jose on the map.

But the Arts Commission and Graham ran into
disagreements.
About money? About art? About Aztec myth? It depends on who you talk
to.
This much we know: Graham was sent back to the drawing board a
number
of times.

Finally, it came down to this: The Arts Commission
threw
up their hands and said, “Here’s $500,000. Do what ever you want.”

There’s a lesson
to be learned here.

You don’t give a
person a half million dollars and
carte blanch.

Especially after
you’ve pissed him off.

Graham made a wax model of an 8 inch pile of dog
poop
which he didn’t show to anyone.

Quetzalcoatl is a protean God that often chooses the
form
of being half bird half serpent. Graham’s Quetzalcoatl is a coiled
snake
with a subtle scales in the shape of feathers. After the shock of
seeing
a giant piece of dog poop, you can see it’s a snake. A snake that was
made
to look like a pile of dog poop.

Instead of bronze, it was made of a cheap material
called
“rockcrete.” It was installed in the middle of the night and
unveiled
the next day.

When the veil was lifted, the assembled dignitaries
immediately
applauded, but then the applause quickly turned weak and there was
stunned
silence.

Arts Commissioners were cornered. “What could
you
have been thinking?” They pleaded innocent claiming they were
victims
of bait and switch.

Graham was tracked down and questioned. He shrugged
his
shoulders and said, “That’s what a plumed serpent looks like” which he
said like he should know.

Opposition to the statue was loud and widespread.

It became a campaign issue against an incumbent city
councilperson,
Blanca Alvarado, and a successful one at that. How could such a thing
have
happened on her watch? A half million dollars down the drain. She
floundered
in the polls.

But then she counterattacked.

She claimed that mocking Quetzalcoatl was a
roundabout,
racist way of making her ethnicity an issue. Her counterpunch
included
claims that her opponent, who happened to be Anglo, was insensitive to
the meaning that Quetzalcoatl held for Mexican Americans. It’s a Brown
Thing.

The Mexican American community quickly seized on
that
line of thinking that the opposition to Q was yet one more
example
of the White Power Structure disrespecting a proud people’s culture.

“How dare you call it shit! If it had been a white
artist
making a white statue, you wouldn’t call it shit! How would you like it
if I called Ben Franklin shit?”

This is what they said in anger. This is what they
said
in public. What they said privately, among themselves, was quite
different.
And often said with partially suppressed giggling. But no matter. The
White
Power Structure had it coming.

The attack against Alvarado backfired and she
won
handily.

Her stunning victory has silenced opposition to this
day.

A lesson here about ethnic politics vs. art appreciation?
Yes.

A plumed serpent is what a Mexican says it is.

I enjoy pointing out the statue of Quetzalcoatl to
out-of-towners
to see their reaction to one of San Jose's most celebrated works of
public
art.

"My God! Do you know what that looks like?" they
usually
say. “What is that?”

A lot of people call it the revenge of Robert Graham.

But a few nights ago, my son and I read a story
about
Quetzalcoatl that he checked out from the library. I didn’t see
anything
like Graham’s Quetzalcoatl. No coiled snake.

But I saw something.

In this particular story, Quetzalcoatl takes the
form
of one thing (a monkey) and then at the end of the story, transforms
into
something else (a huge man-eagle-snake thing) which happens to be to
the
advantage of the virtuous protagonist. The antagonists disparage
Quetzalcoatl
for what he appears to be and that is to their disadvantage.

Things are not always what they appear to be,
especially
objects too great to be restricted to one form. And that's not just
from
the teachings of Don Juan. Christians are to remember that the
disheveled
stranger at their front door might actually be an angel.
Appearances
are deceiving, especially to the insensitive and the unworthy.

No coiled snake but it got me thinking. Maybe the
statue
is just a piece of dog poop to the insensitive, to those who glance at
it in passing, to those who assume that something of great power and
great
value can be frozen in time and space. Those are the antagonists, who
are
of little faith, of shallow depth, and they prove to be the biggest
trouble
for true heroes. They tell the monkey to get out of the temple and they
tell the angel to get a job, or go back to Mexico.

What if this statue is actually a great statue? So
great
that it is like Quetzalcoatl in ways that transcend it’s current form?

Yes, it's ugly, but so was that little monkey in the
story.

The antagonists in the myth felt duped by bait and
switch
much as the Art Commissioners felt duped by Robert Graham. Bait and
switch
is Quetzalcoatl's modus operandi.

The protagonist, the one pure of heart, does not
look
down upon the lowly monkey. Perhaps we ought not to look down on this
public
art.

Let’s not be too quick to loudly categorize what’s
apparent.

The form it is in today may not be the form it is in
tomorrow.
According to the myth, how we regard it today does not determine it’s
fate
but it might define our character.